


Honey Dipped Sighs Over Molasses Eyes

by EverybodyKnowsIt



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, BURN IT, Character Study, Exhaustion, General Headassery, His gear? wack, His hair? wack, His jewelry? wack, Hwang Hyunjin-centric, I say all of this out of love guys i had a bowl cut in middle school, Introspection, Lee Felix (Stray Kids)-centric, M/M, a little? and of whomst? who can say, everyone go home, felix is a beautiful dumbass and Hyunjin pines alone, felixs pre-debut photos have me soBBING, no beta we die like men, that fucking WATCH, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-10-23 01:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17673902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverybodyKnowsIt/pseuds/EverybodyKnowsIt
Summary: Felix has a boyish charm and enough easy sunshine to wrap everyone around his pinky finger. Enough of it to pull himself back from the edge after an elimination, enough to make it as a star in the sky over a strange country. But past the pureeasinessof him, there is something thatburns, burns brightly enough that Hyunjin can't look away.Felix walks into the practice room on the first day, thin little wrists and desperate eyes, and Hyunjinwants.





	1. Be Still My Foolish Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fringecity (indiachick)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiachick/gifts).



> This is a gift for fringecity (indiachick) because it was her works (the fic "murmuration" in particular) that inspired me to start writing again. She's SO talented, please check out her stuff! I don't even know if she likes this band, so uhhhh shitty gift-giving on my part lmao sorry, but I really like Hyunjin's and Felix's personalities in isolation, and I think their relationship dynamic together could be really interesting, and it was fringecity's way of building complex, layered relationships that got me to try my hand at this. I really like Hyunjin's particular brand of carefree elegance that is really all too careful, and Felix's meticulous cultivation of that certain boyish charm. I think they both are painfully aware of the image they need to put out to succeed, and combining that with a deep perception of _each other _would be quite fascinating.__
> 
>  
> 
> I listened to Hozier's _Almost (Sweet Music)_ while writing the entire chapter if you can't tell

He walks into the trainee practice room for the first time on a forgettable Tuesday during a lukewarm March, thin little wrists and desperate eyes. Hyunjin doesn’t believe in love at first sight, not at all, not _ever_ , but it doesn’t mean he can look away. His undercut is shaved a little lopsided--just a little--like his barber may have gotten distracted halfway through. Hyunjin doesn’t mind, not really, it looks--looks boyish, he could hazard to say. His smile is wide when he introduces himself to the other trainees, a row of porcelain teeth flashing, but he soon sequesters himself to the corner of the room, folded up like a marionette doll. His laugh rings loud and his eyes glint honey in the fluorescent lighting, but his hands flit like little anxious birds to check his pulse, like he truly can’t believe his own nervousness, his own reckless gall of being here. There’s a gigantic gold watch strapped to his arm and it’s the ugliest fucking thing Hyunjin’s seen in his entire life.

_What an odd boy._

“Is something the matter, Hyunjin-ah?” asks a long-limbed dancer next to him, a little coy, a little concerned. He appreciates the concern.

He aims to make the question casual, slate-grey neutral, hummed around the lip of his water bottle, “Who’s that? The new boy.”

Their nose wrinkles, like they’re a little annoyed but a little charmed, and Hyunjin will soon learn that it’s a common response to this ridiculous, silly, _beautiful_ boy, “Oh, him? That’s Lee Felix. Yongbok-ah. Jikseu. Who the fuck even knows. His Korean’s pretty shitty but,” their eyebrows wiggle like fat caterpillars, and Hyunjin doesn’t really want to hear what comes next, and _yet_ he desires any scrap of knowing this boy. “But, he’s a looker even with those freckles, yeah? I bet in the dark you wouldn’t be able to--” The instructor calls out an end to the break, and Hyunjin escapes hearing where that particular trainwreck of a sentence ends with little more than an apologetic smile and mild irritation. He didn’t notice the freckles from across the room, but knowing about them now? He wants to-- He shakes his head. He shouldn’t _want_ anything, _especially_ from the lovely, freckled foreign boy with the fugly watch.

_Lee Felix, huh. Felix, Yongbokkie, Jikseu. Felix--_

He lets it thrum in his head while he runs through the assigned choreography, lets it beat around in his skull like a really good synth-backing to a really good beat to a really good track, and he decides he likes the foreign hiss of it, the two-beat drum of the vowels. One high, one low. Hyunjin appreciates symmetry.

_Felix. Felix. Felix._

Monthly evaluations are just around the corner, where even he gets a little rough and raw around the edges, a little hungry in the middle, and the harmless mnemonic repetition keeps his brain on the same tempo as his body. If he tells himself that’s the only reason for keeping the name of this foreign boy in the back of his brain, dripping down his spine, etched in the beat of his footsteps--well--that’s his secret to keep.

* * *

If the sound of _Felix_ sounds nice thumping in his head intertwined with the rhythm of the beat, it sounds even nicer lilting off the tip of his tongue when Hyunjin introduces himself during the next break, _You're Felix right? Felix. Lee Felix. Maybe not our first Aussie, but for sure the prettiest._

Maybe it's the honeyed two-beat syllables of Felix's name that allows him to say that, maybe the molasses slip of Felix's gaze as it crawls up his body from the floor, might be it's his stilted unfamiliarity with the bumps and dips of the English language, but in truth Hyunjin has no time or patience for _might be_ and _maybes_. It's a test. It's a _game_. It always is. The trainees that get flustered in front of pretty faces and prettier hunger-worn bodies, that mess up interviews and revert back to their mother tongue too many times too often, _well_ , Hyunjin supposes, _those trainees will get to speak in their mother tongue again soon enough._

But Felix does not indulge-- in him, in English.

"I'm sure Chris will be disappointed to hear that," he says, Korean halting but tongue clever, he grins and Hyunjin was _right_ , the freckles _are_ clearer up close, he _wants_ \--

He grins back and it's sharp.

* * *

Practice is over and everyone is gone, the dour instructor, the long-limbed, coy dancer who wouldn't mind Felix's freckles in the dark, Hyunjin's only other friend in this section, Lee Minho with his leopard eyes, iron-will and crackling laughter. Han Jisung is loitering in the hallway, but Hyunjin figures that Jisung skulks everywhere, all the time, like a willow-o-wisp in a snapback and BB-cream, and shouldn't be counted.

It's him and Felix. _Felix_ , the foreign-boy wonder with the ivory smile and jittery limbs.

He watches out of the corner of his eye, waiting, leisurely scrolling through Instagram to look at food he can't have and people he wants to know, in practice gear too sweaty and damp to be comfortable, but Hyunjin has decided to wait, so he will _wait_. His plan, as complex and nefarious as it is, is foiled when he gets genuinely distracted by his feed.

 _Park Jinyoung-sunbae is so talented. Unquestionably, that will be me someday, without a single doubt._ He pauses, _I wonder how much work he's had done? Probably a little, an idol like that comes sculpted from the hands of man and God._

He likes the photo and gets vague satisfaction in seeing a red heart bloom and disappear over an artistically-shredded Balenciaga hoodie likely worth ten times his monthly stipend. _Jinyoung-sunbae,_ he decides, _looks good in success._ Hyunjin idly wonders if Jinyoung always shone this dazzlingly bright, trimmed in Versace under the spotlight of the _Got7_ golden age, but he thinks enough money can really paint anyone this pretty.

Hyunjin feels someone tap him on the shoulder and it takes everything in him to swallow his surprise. _This isn't a schoolyard, get ahold of yourself, get ahold of your schoolboy heart._ He looks up at Felix, at Yongbokkie, at Jikseu, at _who the fuck even knows_ and waits.

He waits for it, for the inevitable. He likes to think he isn't conceited, but being a realist in this industry is a strength, and Hyunjin is strong--cuttingly strong and softly strong like thorns and petals at once poured into a boy. _Hyung, you're so handsome! You look like a prince. Hyung, your face is so pretty, you look kinda like a girl, fairy-boy. Pretty-boy. Hyung, they picked you for your visuals, yeah? How can you dance that well? Got something to prove? Do you? Hyung, you're so cool. Hyung, do you like me? I like you. I want you._

_Hyung. Hyung. Hyung. Beautiful. Pretty. Perfect. You're perfect. You got something to prove, pretty boy?_

Felix's mouth starts moving and can't seem to stop, "Hyunjin-ssi! _Ah shit_ , Hyung? Hyunjin? Hyung-jin? Nah, that's not it. Do I call you hyung? Am I doing this right? Am I being rude?" A shy wisp of a red flush blossoms at the top of freckled cheeks and Hyunjin wants to stop him, but he doesn't know enough about what's happening to stop anything. Felix pays no mind to Hyunjin's flummoxed silence, to the rules of the Korean language, or to his own embarrassment, and pushes forward.

"I love your dancing, Jesus Christ, how did you get the choreography down so fast? It took me fucking forever. The sequence at the beginning, with the body roll? I think I dislocated my spine and the instructor hates me now. She hates me _and_ my spine. Can you teach me how to do that? If you want? Only if you want, though. Hey, do you do popping? _Hey_ , do you do  _b-boying_?"

Felix gasps, despite the tips of his own ears turning candy-pink, and Hyunjin is suddenly and brutally hit with the inexplicable urge to bite them, " _Do you want to see my videos from Australia?"_

Hyunjin is silent.

"Hyung," Felix tacks on to the end of his spiel, like he thinks it's the universal Korean fix-all for whatever the fuck just came out of his mouth.

Hyunjin is lost and confused and surprised, doesn't know which way is up and left and down because he's floating ten meters in the air, which he soon learns is a painfully common reaction to this bright, barely-bilingual, _beautiful_ boy, "Hyunjin-ah is fine." He says faintly, "We're around the same age." Felix nods vigorously, which Hyunjin will come to learn means he doesn't really know why anything is the way it is, but willing to work with it regardless.

Hyunjin pauses, "I would love to see your dance videos, Felix." It surprises him that he means it.

Felix smiles and Hyunjin feels a little light-headed, too many breathfuls of helium and stardust. He should go eat. At seventeen, struck meteorite stupid, he doesn't have any other promising solutions to the way his blood simmers, the cotton candy fluffing in his chest.

As he leaves for the shitty JYP cafeteria to stuff himself full of lettuce, or croutons smothered in ranch, or any of their other bountiful offerings, Hyunjin thanks everything from luck, to God, to Park Jinyoung that no one else witnessed whatever that was. He wants to hoard it, forget about it, revel in it. He wants to burn alive in this boy.

Jisung shrieks from behind them, finally bored of lurking, or making a mess, or whatever else he does when he’s not being an irritatingly talented pain in the ass, “Wait for me! I’m fucking _starving_. Hey, do you guys want ramyun? Felix, I fucking love that shit, _God_ , inject it into my veins--”

Jisung doesn’t count.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Jisung dearly, like a younger brother, so maybe that's why I'm so mean to him lmao. I haven't written anything but research papers in years, so constructive criticism is needed and welcome!
> 
> Edit: There is now a moodboard! Go crazy kids
> 
> https://padlet.com/evybdyknwit/g366t0ilwmoz


	2. The Drums That Start Off Night and Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix is a puzzle and a quandary and a _baseline_ in his chest, and Hyunjin decides it's time to let go, even if in truth that decision is made for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo this is awkward but this part was meant to go with the first chapter, but I thought my word processor ate it. However, that was not the case! I wouldn't get used to the 3 hour updating schedule though, as nice as it is!
> 
> P.S. If someone could come over and teach me to use Microsoft Office sometime soon, that would be g r e a t. I tire of mine own incompetence.

Felix is a dilemma wrapped in a problem buried in a rubik’s cube walking on two long legs, and it infuriates Hyunjin to no _end_.

He has the face of an _NCT Dream_ flower-boy and slender thighs that belong in a _Twice_ MV, but a voice straight out of the _Monsta X_ rap line and Hyunjin is--Hyunjin is confused.

Hyunjin likes things he can understand, maybe not _physically grasp_ , but things he can know. Dancing and music and people are all things Hyunjin knows. Felix defies being known like the concept offends him, and Hyunjin truly can’t _stand_ it.

Hyunjin is confused about Felix who sings perfectly on-key to Ariana Grande in the kitchen and raps on rhythm to G-Dragon in the shower, according to Kim Seungmin’s simultaneous admiration and ire, but who fucking _bombs_ his first monthly evaluation.

Felix who eats copiously and joyously with the other trainees, refusing to miss out, refusing to not compete for the last chicken thigh, the last slice of pizza, the last _anything_ , but Hyunjin has a careful eye and notices his absence at breakfast, spies a dieting app on Felix’s shitty Iphone 6 over his shoulder that has been _meticulously_ filled in, not a single calorie overlooked or exceeded.

Felix who complains about Bang Chan-hyung’s mothering to no end, but follows him around like a duckling. Felix who tells snappish,  _Thrasher_ -clad Seo Changbin-hyung he looks manly, _begs_ to be a part of 3Racha, listens to every scrap of advice from his hyung’s mouth with persistent, pierced-gaze, burning focus, but declines any invitation to coffee or ramyun or _anything_.

 _It's fine_ , he says, brushing Hyunjin off with smile, but it's barely that, moreso a quirk of the lips as a curtain to hide behind,  _go on without me, I wouldn't want to-- god, what's the word-- intrude. I wouldn't want to intrude._ His gaze doesn't leave the floor. 

 _You wouldn't be_ , he responds, and for once the sentiment rings true. Felix is sweet like summer blackberries and bitingly clever when Hyunjin can understand him, _he's got moxie for sure_ , his mom would say. He's an intrusion, but of the best kind.

 _It's alright, Jin-ah, I need to practice these verses for tomorrow's_ _schedule_ , he says _,_ and Hyunjin turns to leave, spirit crumbling and feet dragging. He likes Minho well enough when he's not teasing, and Jisung is survivable when he's not the human embodiment of a pit viper, but he can't help but wish Felix was by his side, eating cheap, greasy japchae and talking his ear off about dancing. He feels a hand suddenly grab his wrist and turns back to see papers littered with R&B crooning and dirty rap and slick hip-hop double-entendre fluttering to the floor.  _Maybe next time_ , Felix murmurs, eyes wide like he's regretting everything that led to this moment, before quickly dropping his hand to lean down and gather the papers he dropped. His silver promise and the sight of his red-tipped ears stick like gum to Hyunjin's brain all the way to the restaurant, let him laugh bubbly careless at Jisung's pointed barbs.

What an odd boy. What an odd, fetching boy with his shaking hands and his paper verses and his moxie.

Hyunjin is confused about Felix who laughs too weird and cackly at his own, unfunny foreigner’s jokes that Hyunjin never understands, who can almost do the splits and is mad that he can’t. Felix who unthinkingly butchers Hyunjin’s mother tongue without remorse, but who shares his water bottle with him just the same. Felix who is desperate to fit in, to find a home here in the slick, concrete jungle of Seoul, but who builds walls and maintains careful distance like it’s habit.

Felix who is ten centimeters shorter, but who takes up ten times the space and disappears ten times as quickly. Felix who talks so fast his brain can’t keep up, who stumbles over nouns and verbs and _hana_ , _dul_ , _ses_ and sometimes his own Nikes, who is blushed-shy quiet for the rest of the day after. Felix who grasps Hyunjin’s cross and leans in, _leans up_ , says _Hyunjin-ah, I’m Catholic too._ Who smiles with his eyes and adds, _but I never liked church much_.

 _It’s mostly for the aesthetic_ , he wants to say, wants to scream. His throat feels a little dry, something heavy and warm settling low in his belly whenever Felix gets too close. He should go get some water. He’s probably dehydrated. A voice in his head tells him that’s _bullshit, you drank a liter this morning you vain bitch_ , and he knows he’s really lost it because it sounds like Minho-hyung.

Hyunjin allows himself to think these things, allows the drumbeat of _Felix, Felix, Felix_ to thump in his ribcage like a baseline, because it’s preferable to thinking about the other things around him. How much he misses his dog. The math exam he failed. How stressed and tired and  _hungry_ he is, hungry in more than one way, in all the ways. The whispers of a new group, _Chan-hyung’s_ group, JYP’s fresh pet project. As soon as he debuts, Hyunjin promises himself, this will _stop._

Hyunjin never lies, at least, not to _himself._

“Isn’t Felix-hyung cool?” Says Yang Jeongin, as he plops down next to him on their mysteriously-stained couch, the springs squelching in protest. The couch has seen hundreds of trainees, meltdowns, trysts, and probably a couple world wars, and now bearing witness to the suffering of one Hwang Hyunjin, it is most definitely unimpressed.

Hyunjin loves Jeongin-ie, even though he tried not to, loves him more than the sushi his parents buy for him and watermelon in July and drowsy half-sleep on lazy Sunday mornings, loves him enough to spare him from a lie and also the whole truth.

“Yeah, he’s pretty cool,” says Hyunjin miserably, wishing for lightning to strike him down and kill him on the spot, or for Felix to body slam him again, like he did earlier today when he royally fucked up the choreo. The same thing, really, if you think about it. And Hyunjin does. Think about it, that is.

 _It’s ok to want things_ , says his ambition. _A_ _s long as you have control_ , counters his dream.

* * *

 Chan-hyung tells him he wants Hyunjin to be a part of his group. 

_You'll be our ace dancer, our lead rapper. We need you, Jinnie._

He doesn't say _visual_ even though it's implied, an undercurrent to Hyunjin's acceptance and continued presence despite his missteps. Hyunjin is grateful anyway. To be anything _but_ grateful to Bang Chan, a golden-boy forged seven years in the making, who has worked _so_ hard for _so_ long, wouldn’t be right. He needs this. Chan, Hyunjin,  _he needs this_.

Hyunjin smiles his prettiest smile and says _Thank you, Hyung_. He grins wide with thirty-two teeth lined up like soldiers in a row, docile and disarming, just as an idol should be, just as who Hyunjin is.

He resolves to forget every insignificant detail he’s gathered on Lee Felix, to strip every _want_ he has for this boy from his bones, even if it kills him.

* * *

Much, much, much later, when they have debuted, when people have decided that _they_ really matter, all nine of them, they get coiffed and manicured by overpaid stylist-Noonas who may _actually_ know what they’re doing. They are at once picked apart and put back together _prettier, stronger, better_ and shoved onto a stage to answer recycled questions and smile ivory sharp and tidepool shallow at the cameras, the entire lot of them together,

_Nine or None. Nine or None. Nine or None._

Jeongin-ie laughs at something the host says, high and screechy like a dolphin in a way that makes Hyunjin want to pinch his cheeks and shake him to pieces. “Hyunjin-hyung is definitely the most caring,” he states, like it’s a fact to be found in any encyclopedia one would stumble across. Jeongin-ie sniffs and continues, “ _In fact_ , he’s so loud in his love it’s almost annoying.”

Hyunjin sighs, in a way that’s almost fond and almost offended, something the cameras and mics and hosts won’t hear. Jeongin-ie knows him well, but not completely. He steals a glance at Felix, at Yongbokkie, at Jikseu, at _who the fuck even knows_ , across the room, all honey-blonde and sun-dipped and freckled skin under silk, and he thinks _in fact_ he can be very quiet, in his love, when he wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never actually SEEN Changbin in Thrasher but I want it desperately to be true, @ JYP let his inner edgelord out?? Also I heard offhand that Hyunjin wears the cross mostly for the aesthetic (he might also be catholic? idk??) and drinks a shit ton of water for his skin and jfc I stan one (and only one) hydrated bougie king. 
> 
> JYP bring back Elsa-Felix you cowards


	3. I Wish We Were All Rose-Colored Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix is a distraction, a night-wanderer, something soft and something burning.
> 
>  
> 
> _Hyunjin fucks up at dusk, and makes it right before dawn_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How?? Do you?? Write Dialogue??? I can't believe I'm being forced to write characters interacting with one another in a believable fashion, this is oppressive. Honestly, I should just let Hyunjin sulk alone for another 3 chapters so I don't have to write any more talking lmao. I'm absolutely drained from my Chinese history exam, so there's maybe one brain cell left hanging by a thread that's writing this. 
> 
> Jokes aside, I think a lot of people forget that pre-debut they were actual, literal, children? Not just Jeongin, but like, the lot of them. Coming from a former 'gifted child' who went to uni hella early, if you put actual, literal, children under high-pressure for long enough, they start to break down. Like walnuts. Or cooked rice. Ooooof bad imagery, moving on, thanks for reading!
> 
> This chapter brought to you by Paramore's _Rose-Colored Boy_.

The coffee at JYP is unremarkable, gritty and expensive and going down heavy, but Hyunjin drinks it without complaint. They have finally debuted, on a _reality show,_ of all things, as if their lives are not already under constant, microscopic assessment. Hyunjin is a mere beetle and JYP Entertainment is his petri dish. He starts seeing cameras in the corner of his eye wherever he goes and wonders if he will ever get used to being ogled and assessed the way petri dish beetles are. He thinks that  _he better_ , or life will soon be very, very hard.

Hyunjin feels the debut stress and October chill settle into the cracks of his bones, snap at the back of his teeth, and if the coffee is shitty, it at least keeps him awake and warm, sloshing above rock-bottom. Felix, hovering behind him, doesn't look too much better, judging by the purple blooming deep under his eyes. But for today they're _done._  At least, until management runs them off to the next hoop to jump through. At least until tomorrow. Hyunjin is living his life in _at least_ and bated breath, and he's not sure how much more he can take before he suffocates.

_Hyunjin is tired. A dragging, gasping exhaustion that chases him through even the longest sleep._

He sets down their orders on the table, and Felix eyes him carefully as he takes a measured sip, “You’ve been avoiding me lately, Jin-ah."

He says this unceremoniously, as he would talk about the weather (drizzly), or his sleep from the night before (poor--Hyunjin would know, Felix is a night-wanderer, a clumsy one, whacking his shins in the dark and swearing in every language he knows). Felix rambles in Korean, jumbles his words and fucks up his grammar and reaches for words that aren't _quite_ right, if only because they’re the only ones there. But Hyunjin is attentive, and Hyunjin is listening, and Hyunjin has learned that at the heart of it, Felix always means what he says.

"I'm here with you now, aren't I? Freckles-ah, you know I like you too much to ignore you," he says, and Hyunjin may never lie, but there is a murky area of half-truths and omission he lives in, a smoke screen in shades of gray that makes his words more palatable to swallow, prettier to hear.

Felix rolls his eyes in a way that pinches his face a little, takes another sip of his americano and stares through the smoke, “You’re kinda full of shit, Jin-ah. If I’ve _done_ something, just _tell_ me and stop being such a _baby_ about it,” his tone is kind of annoying, wheedling and whiny in a way that reminds Hyunjin a little too much of Jeongin-ie and _Jesus Christ they can’t be learning from each other? Can they?_

Hyunjin shudders at the thought of _two_ Felixes --one is enough to take over his mind and ruin his life, two might actually kill him--and he doubles down, “I have been _nothing_ but kind to you, Felix, an exemplary colleague--”

"I'm not worried about my colleague, _smartass_ , I'm wondering what happened to my _friend_. And you _are_ being nice, I think. _Too nice_ ,” Felix’s face gets scrunchy enough to make his nose start wrinkling, and Hyunjin is stunned by it enough to forgive the interruption. Intentionally, of course, because he’s kind like that.

“You _are_ avoiding me, Hyunjin-ah, I can tell, I’m not fucking _stupid_ , you talk to me like you talk to the girls who sign your love letters, like you're not all _there_ , and it’s totally weird-- even-- _even Jisung-ah’s_ noticed it, and he doesn’t notice _anything_.” Felix's elbows thump on the table, he buries his dark eyes and darker circles into the palms of his hands.

He looks tired too, in that dragging, gasping way. His rumpled bangs flop over his fingers and Hyunjin feels his breath catch sticky in his throat, like chewing gum he forgot to throw away. He knows he's fucked up because he's met brick walls that can read a room better than Jisung, but to tell Felix the unadulterated truth is a hole much bigger than the one he's currently digging himself.

He grips his paper cup of coffee so hard he feels the scorch through the sleeve, “I never called you _fucking stupid_ , Felix, but if you keep reaching for things that aren’t there, you might be _right_ ,” it's not the _cruelest_ thing Hyunjin has ever said in his life, lacking the frigid bite he can manage when he wants something to sting, to fester. But it's snappish enough to fall outside of the tense banter they've cobbled together in truce, and any pinch of cruelty towards honey-eyed, bitten-lipped Felix with the lavender-bloom under eyes and the weight of the world on his shoulders fills Hyunjin's chest with lead.

His stomach feels slushy, and he wishes he could blame the acid wash of coffee clinging to the back of his throat.

Hyunjin wants to apologize. But Hyunjin is going to debut soon, debut _for real_ , after he pulls through this ridiculous charade of a reality show. Hyunjin is going to be an idol like no other, Korea’s prince of glass, a reincarnation of Apollo lain into white marble. But an idol prince raised from glass and marble doesn't _want_ , not like the way he wants Felix.

_Freckles-ah._

But Felix makes it tremendously difficult to forget him, ripping into his life with his thin fingers and burning eyes, and Hyunjin doesn’t know what to do--

He opens his mouth to say something, _anything,_ but Felix raises his head and beats him to it, “ _God_ , you’re such a _dick_ , sometimes,” if his voice was any lower it would be inaudible, but Hyunjin pays attention, always, and Hyunjin hears him clearly.

Felix’s eyelashes start fluttering, like there’s dirt caught in his eyes, but when Hyunjin looks closer they seem bleary, shiny-glazed wet, and he hates himself a little bit. Felix’s ears blush taffy-pink, like Hyunjin knows they do when he feels flustered, or frustrated, because Felix feels deeply, and his ears always betray him.

Felix takes a deep enough drag of his americano to choke on it, turns on a heel with the precision of a dancer, and stalks back in the direction of the practice rooms.

His eyes start to feel itchy, and he tips back his head and pretends to find the cafe lighting-fixtures especially riveting this Thursday evening.

The thoughts come unbidden,  _I hate feeling so tired my soul is dripping out the cracks in my ribs, I hate that I made you cry, I hate how you make me laugh, I hate that you got me addicted to being treated like a person and not a pretty thing, I hate how your willow limbs make me feel when you dance, I hate most of all that I still want you so much it feels like a brand on my skin_ , but Hyunjin drinks them down without complaint.

The coffee at JYP is unremarkable, gritty and expensive and going down heavy, and Hyunjin might as well drink that too.

* * *

Hyunjin likes Kim Woojin, has liked him from the first glimpse of his crooked smile and the breadth of his shoulders. Hyunjin has an intuition for these kinds of things, a seventh sense for telling the wolves from the sheep, and Woojin is full to the brim with strength born from patience rather than malice. Woojin is steady in his speaking, unfaltering in his kindness, unwavering in his musicality. He is collected with an unshakeable grounding the rest of them lack, their songbird with unyielding wings. If _Stray Kids_ is a Hellevator, Hyunjin muses, delirious on late nights and cafe lattes, Woojin is the last, rickety safety-mechanism that saves them. Hyunjin likes Kim Woojin, which is why when he calls out to Hyunjin in the dorm hallway so late into Thursday it's almost Friday, Hyunjin swallows his desire to go to bed and stay there _forever_ and turns around.

"Hyunjin-ah! Could I grab you for a second? I won't be long, I know you're tired."

Hyunjin thinks it's kind of him to say that, because he knows Woojin's been awake long before him, practicing choreography already second-nature to the dance line, and ensuring Chan doesn't run himself into the ground before they've officially debuted, "Of course, hyung. If you need help with the choreo, I have vocals till eight tomorrow, but I can move something around."

Woojin hums in what could be anything from acknowledgment to thanks, and says, "The choreo is fine, at least for the Monday performance of Hellevator. No, it’s Felix-ah."

_I never called you fucking stupid, but if you keep reaching for things that aren't there, you might be right._

Hyunjin feels the blood rush from his head and what feels to be the start of a migraine beat at the base of his skull, "What did he say to you? Is he still upset? Did you get him to come to dinner?"

"He didn't _have_ to say anything," Woojin pauses, "Hyunjin-ah, _you_ don't even come to dinner."

"It's the principal of it, _healthy choices_ ," and if it comes out in a deflated murmur, Woojin takes pity and politely ignores it.

He sighs, but it's affectionate, "Look, I don't know what happened, and to be frank, I don't really care, but I would like you to fix it."

"What makes you think I did anything? You _know_ how he is." Hyunjin knows better than anyone, he likes to think, how Felix  _is_ : fickle and flighty and quick to laugh but quicker to run, some fae creature contrived of feckless passion and salt air of the southern hemisphere. It's confusing, the way he is, and Hyunjin knows this better than anyone.

Woojin squints at him like he's a bit dense, "I know how _both_ of you are. You get under each other's skin, in a good way a lot of the time, but sometimes not." And maybe it's as simple as that.

Hyunjin gapes like a fish and hopes Woojin never figures out that Felix goes much deeper than just his skin.

Woojin clasps his shoulder, leans in to do it, and the touch is warm, "I know it's hard right now. I leave for the studio every morning not knowing if I'll come back and see they've packed my bags for me. But if we're not together in this, we're together in nothing, and we become _nothing_."

Hyunjin shudders, full-bodied like a leaf, and he tells himself it's due to the damp autumn night, " _Hyung_ , everything is _so_ hard."

It’s the biggest admission of weakness he’s allowed himself in a long time, but Woojin doesn’t tease, or probe, or ask questions Hyunjin can’t answer. He just lightly scrapes his nails across Hyunjin’s neck and lets some of the exhaustion bleed out of him.

"It's a little easier with someone by your side," Woojin says, and it feels like a promise. "Whatever happened is yours to make right, but I don't want to see Felix-ah walking into vocals glassy-eyed and shaking angry, not again."

"I don't either, hyung, _I really don't._ "

“Good, it’s bad for my blood-pressure.” Woojin smiles crooked and wishes him _goodnight Jinnie,_  and it sounds like he means it.

* * *

Hyunjin finds him by following the sound of shins hitting table legs, because Felix is a night-wanderer, a clumsy-loud one with too long legs and too many swear words spilling off his tongue. He finds him, curled in an oversize _Thrasher_ hoodie, tucked into the window frame overlooking the city, a little sparrow of a boy.

"Felix," and there are too many other things Hyunjin wants to say.

_I'm sorry, you're not fucking stupid, you never were, I'm sorry, I really like you, I'm sorry, I'm in love with the way the city lights curl in your hair, I'm sorry._

" _Felix_ ," he tries again, and Felix is watching him now, with lidded eyes and a mouth curled around a hoodie drawstring, "Do you have any more dance videos? From Australia."

Felix pops the drawstring from his mouth and Hyunjin swallows, traces the movement with his gaze, can't help but think _Changbin-hyung is going to throw a bitch fit when he finds that hoodie_ , "Maybe a couple," Felix says, "Come here, Jin-ah." And Hyunjin knows he is mostly forgiven.

* * *

It is much, much, much later, when dawn is rising and Hyunjin has his head pillowed on Felix's lap, dozing while watching a tiny Felix wiggle and twist and shout on a cracked screen, when Felix speaks, "I know my Korean is bad, that I misunderstand, that I go left when they tell me to go right. I know that I fuck up in choreo and my voice cracks in vocals, but I'm  _not_ stupid," however his voice trembles uncertain.

"You're really not," Hyunjin says, and cracking an eye only to see Felix's face shaded by the rose light of dawn makes his insides feel like syrup, "I'm just a dick, sometimes."

"Besides," he says, opening his other eye and unfurling a smile, "You speak better Korean than Jisung-ah, and he's from Incheon."

Felix laughs, and Hyunjin thinks that a crisp autumn sunrise can't compete.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually really heavily debated putting in the bits with Jisung, the jokes about brick walls and Korean. I think Jisung is _incredibly_ empathetic (case in point, Minho's elimination challenge, whatever fuckery _that_ was) but he's exuberant in a way that I think kind of.. glosses over the other's around him. Idk that's my two cents. Jisung, if ur out there, sweatie, I'M cackling like a goblin at your jokes. The korean bit was just in the spirit of their teasing, especially in the early days. Jisung can rap better and faster than I can speak lmao.
> 
> The 'stupid' thing seems overblown a bit, looking back, but being called a dumbass in your second or third language is an insult that will never fail to turn me into a snappish bitch. You try so, so hard, even when the words just don't come out right, or at all, and to be mocked for it? Infuriating to me.


	4. There's Nothing Sweeter Than My Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nine of them settle and sink into each other, closing the divets and grooves and weaknesses they find in one another, and Hyunjin thinks he's so full of love he can barely breathe.
> 
> Like a lot of things, it doesn't last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give Hozier's _Work Song_ a listen <3

The days fly away, one after the other in a slapdash rush of long practices and sleepless nights, and he wakes up one Wednesday to find October ending. Hyunjin recalls a painting, the _Dalí_ print half-heartedly taped to the wall of his Freshman art class, with the melting clocks and fuzzy dreaminess of a cliffside dawn. Hyunjin remembers Felix lit up in city sunrise, weeks ago now, and he thinks The Persistence of Memory is a beautiful cruelty.

Time feels like that now, _dissolving stopwatches_ and _grenadine syrup_ , rapid and melting and bittersweet in the lead-up to their stage performance.

Today is their day off, though--a rarity--but a welcome one. Hyunjin finds himself delighted, despite the heavy cloud of upcoming eliminations. He likes bowling well enough, likes winning even more, but he is eager most of all to bask in Seungmin’s infectious laughter and Chan’s tireless energy. _Besides_ , Hyunjin smiles, pulling on a sweatshirt he swore he bought for _himself_ in Jeju, but saw Jeongin-ie wearing last week, _Chan-hyung is a sore loser, and kind of a sucker, and it’ll be easy to trick him into a bet he won’t win._

Everyone knows that vending machine crackers taste better when free, and _best_ when won through wicked means.

* * *

Seungmin throws himself into Hyunjin’s arms when he strikes, hangs giggling off his neck with two noodly arms when he wins. Chan-hyung swears vehemently off-camera when he, _predictably_ , gambles and loses, but his eyes are fond and his dimples crinkle when he buys them 22,000 won worth of Nongshim shrimp crackers. But Chan-hyung is petty, and more dangerously, petty with good aim and a sense of poetic justice, and when he tosses a handful of shrimp chips at Seungmin at least five get caught in his hair. As Seungmin struggles to remove them, and shrieks for their manager when he tangles it all up further, Hyunjin laughs so hard his lungs hurt and knees buckle, and he thinks he hasn’t been this happy in a long time.

_Is this what it feels like? To love like this?_

Hyunjin has tears rolling down his face when he pulls Seungmin into an embrace. “Leave me alone, ugly,” Seungmin says, pride hurt but hiding a smile, and Hyunjin bursts into another round of laughter so painful he thinks he might _actually_ be going into cardiac arrest. He hopes Chan-hyung isn’t vindictive enough to let him die on the musty-ass floor of a deserted bowling alley, but he’s a wild card on the best of days.

 _“You did well today, Seungmin-ie,”_ Hyunjin murmurs into his hair, and even though Seungmin smells like garlic prawns, he feels a little bit lighter.

_Yeah._

* * *

Hyunjin is sprawled on the dorm couch that night, squinting through the slits in a sheet mask as he scrolls through the day’s footage. Felix is lounging in his lap, playing a video game with the same laser focus and pinpoint precision he applies to dancing, to singing, to everything _but_ washing his face in the evening, it seems. There’s eyeliner still smudged along his lash line, lips stained cherry in a pout that deepens when he fails to murder some unsuspecting soul with a machete. He smells a little bit like Hyunjin’s cologne, which he likes to nick whenever he gets the chance, rich spice and linen, and Hyunjin’s so attuned to the warmth of Felix’s thighs on his he could write a rap from his heartbeat, if he wanted. He does.

Hyunjin knows what he _should_ do--tell Felix to go and wash his fucking face before he breaks out, tell him he’s bored of watching him win this dumb game. He _could_ just move Felix himself, because Hyunjin really _doubts_ Felix makes it to 60 kg soaking wet, and it would be so _easy_ to grab him by the waist and-- _and just_ \-- Hyunjin makes a sound somewhere between a choke and a dying wheeze, thunks his head on the back of the couch, hopes to knock loose the last few brain cells he has left and live out the rest of his life in a coma.

Felix misinterprets, “Sorry if I’m heavy, Jin-ah, I’ll move after this match, I just need to _get_ this motherfucker and we’ll be good.” Felix shoots someone in the heart on-screen, one shot one kill. Hyunjin can relate, metaphysically.

_We’ll be good. We’re always good. You’re something good, head to toe, in your burning soft way._

Hyunjin sighs, “You’re fine where you are, Lix-ie, focus on winning for me, yeah?” He gets shushed for his trouble, but the ugly neon glare of the screen highlights a beaming smile, and Hyunjin thinks this moment might be a little perfect.

The mask starts to feel gloopy after all that talking, so he lets go of Felix’s elbow to peel it off and tuck it back in the plastic. The packaging promises _Honey Soft Skin! Anytime! Anywhere!_ and Hyunjin eyes Felix, the nape of his neck and the mole under his ear, and thinks _honey, honey, honey_ , but that’s _weird_ even for him, and he studiously devotes his attention to the Vlive playing unattended on his phone.

He notices three figures rough-housing on a blanket, lit up bright and sunny in open-air, and he realizes this is Felix’s team. “Hey, how was Hangang park? Did you have a good time? It’s been a while since I’ve been, we should go together next time.”

“Huh?” hums Felix absently, fingers flittery and stretching across the console, “It was fine, I guess. Minho-hyung cheats at games and getting kissed by Changbin-hyung was kind of weird, but the sandwiches they packed us were soggy as hell. We should go, I’d like that.”

Hyunjin feels something unpleasant swell in the back of his throat, and he briefly wonders if there’s a salmonella risk to Nongshim shrimp chips, “ _Excuse me_ , say that again?”

“The sandwiches were soggy.” Felix kills a man and looks up thoughtfully, “I also don’t really like turkey all that much.”

Hyunjin flicks him in the back of the neck, “ _No,_ dumbass, who _kissed_ you? I must have misheard.”

“ _Ouch_ , stop distracting me, Jin-ah, this is my moment of _truth_. Yeah, I had to pick two people to kiss as penalty. You should have seen Changbin-hyung’s _face_ , I thought he was going to explode, or kill me,” He gestures vaguely to his neck, and Hyunjin spies a soft-touch bruise barely visible in the dim lighting. Felix laughs, “Can’t say he didn’t try.”

Hyunjin feels an ache, mellow but thumping, beat through him as he traces the bruise, “Why did you choose Changbin-hyung for yourself? That seems wrong.” Seems wrong because Changbin-hyung is short and pointy and prickly around the edges, but so _gentle_ at the core, and Felix adores him.

“Minho-hyung would beat my ass to death, and I’m also terrified of him,” he says. “If I made Minho-hyung kiss anyone he’d poison my Gatorade at morning practice, and then I’d die, and never dance again, and _never_ be able to debut with you.”

“Probably true,” Hyunjin concedes, even if that scenario sounds a touch dramatic, because Minho-hyung is affectionate but tetchy, loving only on his own terms, like an overgrown tabby cat.

“And I think Changbin-hyung is handsome.” Felix looks up from his game and eyes Hyunjin warily, in that squinty way he does, “There’s nothing that _seems_ wrong about kissing boys, Jin-ah, it’s as right as anything else.”

Hyunjin prefers the Felix that melts into him, the one that sprawls on him long and languid, prefers that to this Felix, one that stiffens and looks at Hyunjin with deep-eyed caution, “I know,” he says simply, and he leans down a little to plant a kiss on the juncture of neck to collarbone, right on top of a freckle darker than the others. _It’s hard being different_ , he thinks wildly, _and this freckle deserves it_.

It’s a dry peck of a thing, but his skin is summery-warm and lazy-soft, and if he wasn’t crazy he would think he felt Felix shiver under him.

“You’re _ridiculous_ , a ridiculous boy with a sticky face.” says Felix, but he relaxes minutely into his hold, and his voice is burnt sugar dulcet when he says it. “I don’t know why you insist on those masks, Jin-ah, they make me feel all cold and gummy.”

 _Victory Royale!_ Flashes lurid on-screen, and Hyunjin agrees.

* * *

Lee Minho is eliminated, late one November evening, and Hyunjin feels it when the earth stops spinning. The nine of them had just started to settle, to sink into one another and cover the cracks in them, and Hyunjin feels the gap Minho leaves like it’s something physical, a cut or a bruise or some bleeding hurt.

Felix finds him in the practice room, stone quiet and curled on the floor. He doesn’t say anything, but he wipes away a tear with one little finger and Hyunjin collapses into him. Felix is silent--still--but Hyunjin feels the tremor in his arms and the dampness on his shoulder, and he thinks if the world is ending, he would like it to end with Felix.

Hyunjin thinks of Minho-hyung, with his sure footing and biting laughter, hands that take and a heart that gives, clever fingers just as likely to push a water into his hand as they are to pinch his sides, and he thinks The Persistence of Memory is profoundly unfair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deeply apologize if I got any details on _Fortnite_ wrong, but I refuse to know more about it then I have to, it's against my code of ethics :0


	5. You'll Be Thirsting For More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The line between failure and perfection is thin, and Hyunjin treads it carefully. 
> 
> Felix will succeed, even if it means burning himself to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey yall whats good, back at it AGAIN with another chapter. I have a French final in 3 hours and ya boi is _nerveuse_. I think it'll be ok, and I feel better after finishing this. I danced for a while, and noticed in some parts of the reality show that Felix favors his left leg, sometimes. It's TOTAL conjecture, and probably overanalyzing, but I took it and ran with it for the story's sake.
> 
> I listened to Taemin's _Want_ while writing this, not because it fit the mood (oops) but because, uhhhhh, it may be the best thing I've heard in my life. PLEASE if you love yourself, give it a listen!!
> 
> stan talent stan taemin -- there's a reason they both start with t

The loss of Minho leaves them wanting, birthday balloons strung up and ready to pop, piano wire stretched past tune at its breaking point. Hyunjin feels bruised and desperate and a little bit rabid in a way he hasn’t since he was a newcomer, all those months ago. He feels thirteen again, small and drawn into himself tight, while men in polyester suits barter the fate of the pretty boy with idol dreams. Right in front of him, like he’s a doll, like he’s nothing. It’s not a nice feeling.

_He’s a lovely thing, a fairy, that one. Put him through the ringer with the rest of them. The soft looking ones usually don’t last, but this one might, this delicate boy with the hard eyes. If he makes it, bring him back. There’s a lot you can do with a pretty face like that. We’ll make sure. We’ll make it so._

_Minho-hyung’s loveliness didn’t save him_ , Hyunjin thinks dully, idly swirling the coffee in his fourth cup of the day. Minho’s high cheekbones, cutting jawline and sharp smile didn’t protect him from being culled from the herd, so Hyunjin decides that really nothing can be _made sure_ , _made so_ , in the end. He has to be careful, from now on. Being at risk of elimination back in October was humiliating, at the time, but now in November, at the verge of winter, at the verge of something, something _big_ , it has become unacceptable. Hyunjin will be perfect, if it is the one thing he can _make sure_ , _make so._

The coffee churns to the lip of the mug, in danger of spilling over, and Hyunjin has to put a hand on his own wrist to force himself to stop. The mug is ugly, in a delightful kind of way, chipped and cracked and dreadfully lilac purple. It reminds him dually of his grandmother’s house and middle school pottery club, and it’s Chan’s favorite. But then again, Chan has always liked collecting little bits and broken pieces, loving them new again. It hits him then, _he hasn’t seen Chan-hyung in ages_.

After Minho’s elimination, the video he left for them, _I’m sorry I couldn’t be who you needed me to be, I’m sorry I couldn’t improve fast enough, be good enough_ , Chan left for the recording studio, the room reserved for 3Racha that Hyunjin doesn’t know the passcode to, and sometimes it seems like he never came out. He emerges to eat, occasionally, and Hyunjin tries to talk to him.

“Chan-hyung! Good to see you, here, in the dorm again. Alive. Have you been sleeping?” Hyunjin poses the question softly, but it’s still a little loud, in the quiet of their small kitchen.

“I’ve been getting enough,” he says, but his fingers are trembling.

Hyunjin doesn’t know what to say. He usually does, knows the buttons to press to get a smile in return, knows his group mates even better, but Chan looks fragile like this, like one wrong move could shatter him into a million little pieces on the old tile. He knows it’s selfish, but Hyunjin doesn’t want to be the one to break him, ruin this tentative peace they’ve built, hushed over the dorm. Hyunjin pauses, forms his words careful over his tongue, “Take care of yourself, hyung.”

Chan smiles, bleached but honest, a pale mirage of a boy against the drywall, “I will. I promise, _Jinnie_ , don’t you worry about me.”

Hyunjin tries. Is trying.

The weather report says that snow will come early, this winter, this week, and Hyunjin thinks he would like to be here to see it.

* * *

They’re packing up to leave group choreography. It might be three am, it might be five, Hyunjin can’t be bothered to look. Woojin clears his throat, and they all look up from their respective puddles of sweat on the floor, “The managers just texted, the next elimination challenge is busking, in Sinchon. J. Y. Park-sunbaenim will go over the details on tomorrow’s airing, but pieces need to be finished by the end of the week. Make a note, if you have to.”

Jisung snorts, splayed out on the floor like a market cod for sale, “Busking! Great, I always needed a Plan C.”

Jeongin speaks up, intrigued, “What was Plan B?”

Jisung peers at them shrewdly, “Stripping, _obviously."_  Hyunjin debates the merits of jumping out the window, but a fall from the second floor is probably not enough to end him.

It startles a laugh out of Felix, who’s still breathing heavy and hard, leaning on the practice mirror, “Jisung-ah, you know you have to be able to get yourself _up_ the pole in order to strip. I’ve seen you do, maybe, ten push-ups in a row.” Hyunjin hasn’t heard him speak all day, when he’s seen him, and he cannot believe that _this_ is the occasion Felix will rise to.

“I know at least _half_  the choreo to Taemin-sunbae’s _Sexuality_. I’ll work off of that, see where it goes.” Jisung looks over his shoulder like he’s looking for a reaction, looking for _somebody_. No one is there. Some habits are hard to break.

Chan gives a puff of a laugh under his breath, “It’s great that you’ve at least got options, Jisung-ah, now get your shit together so we can head back soon.”

Hyunjin looks to Felix, still sprawled out and fogging up the mirror, hair sweat-slicked and brassy with the first stages of bleaching, and hopes they all manage to get their shit together.

Felix doesn’t look back, closes his eyes and tips his head back, steeling himself for another few hours, another few days, and Hyunjin knows he has to win, has to _stay_.

* * *

They don’t talk about it, but there’s something in the air. The silence before an avalanche, a warning of things to come. Chan doesn’t come back to the dorm much, not until the first light of dawn reaches through the cracks in the blinds. Jisung laughs harder, smiles wider, builds a wall of rigid humor so tight Hyunjin can’t see through it. Jeongin devotes the little free time he has to _Candy Crush_ with a focus bordering obsessive, Seungmin a limpet clinging to his side. Hyunjin thinks at this point Jeongin-ie’s earbuds may have melted into his ears. Changbin goes out, a lot. During the day, during the night, snappish and flighty. Hyunjin would hazard to say he’s writing. Writing _something_ , but he’s cagey enough now that Hyunjin doesn’t know what. Woojin is steady, but quiet, like he’s taking every hurt and stuffing it in a bottle, hiding it in the gaps of his smile. Felix--

_Felix. Yongbokkie. Jikseu. Sliver of a foreign boy, music slipping off his tongue and thirst in his heart._

Felix works like he’s got only days left. If he was a steady smolder before, he’s burning alive, now. Hyunjin only sees him at group practice, the first there, the last to leave. Felix stumbles back into the dorm after recording, voice so hoarse Hyunjin wonders how long he’s been there. Hyunjin just hands him a Gatorade, his favorite, the nasty blue ones, and doesn’t ask. They’re all hungry, sharp-set and craving victory, Felix just a little more than most.

Hyunjin finds him sometimes, when he comes back to the dorm when it’s more early morning than late night. Felix is finally asleep, head cradled on a stack of Korean textbooks. He’s drooling, smudging the neat notes in curled handwriting on the corners, but Hyunjin thinks it’s charming, even though it's still kind of gross. He feels something feather-light swirl in his chest, thinks that _Felix is still a little bit of a baby, huh._

_Baby, baby, baby. Oh, baby._

Hyunjin pulls off his sweatshirt, the one he only _just_ stole back from Jeongin. He slowly wraps it around Felix’s shoulders, brushes his hair back from his face. Hyunjin thinks he’ll look good, blond. Objectively. _This really doesn’t mean anything_ , he thinks, as he wanders off to brush his teeth, _it’s a communal sweater by now_.

The first snow of the season comes. It’s pretty. Hyunjin wants to be here for the next one.

* * *

He doesn’t see it till it slaps him in the face, because for all of his careful attention, being around Felix is snow blindness. A blinder so lovely it hurts to look at. They’re going through the steps of something new, something smoldering and pounding in turn. Changbin calls it _Yayaya_. It’s just the two of them, now, the impenetrable dance line of three minus one. It takes every scrap of talent in him to run through the steps, sweat blurring his vision, everything outside of the music muted soft. Hyunjin doesn’t mind. Focused as he his on the steps, Felix is his beat, and he sees him buckle from the corner of his eye, one leg, then two, then on his knees. He stops immediately, untwists from the spin he was curling into, doesn’t bother to pause the music before he rushes over.

He grasps Felix’s shoulders, wonders briefly if they’d always been this daintily sharp, like a bird’s, and sets him down gently on the floor, “ _Dude_ , what the hell?” He snaps, but laced with more panic than irritation.

“Sorry, sorry, fuck _sorry_ Jin-ah, I’ll be fine, just give me a minute.”

“Is that what I asked? If you were fine? You’re not, that’s _not_ what I said. I said _what the hell happened_?” Something clicks in his brain and he feels a little sick, “You’re not injured, are you? You _wouldn’t_ hide something like that, before the performance?”

Felix snaps his head up, eyes blazing enough to set Hyunjin on _fire_ , “Of course not, I wouldn’t do that to you, I’d _never_ , we have too much riding on this.” He sighs a little, twitches when Hyunjin runs his hands along his right leg, looking for swelling, _it’s the knee_. “It’s only--just--I hurt it, a while back, a long, long time ago. This just _happens_ sometimes,” he says, and he sounds frustrated to tears. Hyunjin smoothes a finger down the curve of one flushed ear, thinks of his ankle that still twinges when it rains.

“It’s fine, Felix, it’s not your fault. But we’re done for the day.”

Felix looks up, eyes wide, “But _practice_ ,” and he says it like it’s the only thing in the world that matters.

Hyunjin stares at him, disbelieving,  “Felix, you’re on the floor right now. This is kind of sad.”

Felix deflates a little, but the nervous line of his body relaxes, “Yeah, it kinda is.”

Hyunjin briefly let’s go of him to cross the room to the first-aid kit tacked to the wall. He thanks the Lord, the _managers_ , specifically, when he finds it fully stocked. He grabs a couple instant cold packs and hurries back, carefully rolling up the leg of Felix’s worn-thin joggers to press one to his skin. Felix hisses at the contact, mumbles _cold, cold, cold_ , and Hyunjin fondly thinks he’s kind of a baby.

_Baby, baby, baby. If I asked you to be my baby, what would you say?_

Hyunjin’s no doctor, but he has seen a fair share of bumps and scrapes and broken bones, and this one looks worse than it is, he decides. It’s a little swollen, a little red, but it still has feeling and it’s not purple, and a little rest should fix it up. He glances up at Felix through his bangs, and thinks that might be the one thing he won’t allow for.

This leg feels a little thinner than he last remembers it, leaner with sharper angles at the joints, and he wonders when he last saw Felix at the table.

_Three days ago? Seven?_

He makes up his mind, “Felix-ie, come out to eat with me.”

Felix wrinkles his nose, glances at the clock on the wall, “Jin-ah, it’s--it’s literally one in the morning.”

Hyunjin flicks him on the temple, but he makes sure it’s gentle, “We’ve been going for hours, we can afford a break, this once. I know you haven’t been eating enough, not like you should. Let me buy you something, on me.”

The blush from his ears moves down his neck, like poetry, “I’ve been eating just _enough_ , thank you. But if you’re paying,” He smiles, an uptick of the mouth more than anything, “I can allow it, _this once_.”

Hyunjin gasps, mock-offended-- _Yah, don’t be greedy, you little leech_ \--but he wraps Felix’s thick wool scarves around his neck with delicate care, slings an arm around his waist to help him up. Felix is a boy born of summer sunshine and sea-air, needs to be extensively bundled before he _considers_ leaving the dorm, and Hyunjin thinks it’s only polite to button his coat, with this early snow. If he takes his time doing it, _well_ , they’re the only ones there.

The walk to the convenience store is quiet, but peaceful, instead of the awful, awkward silence smothering the dorm. Felix is preoccupied with catching snowflakes on his tongue, moving with a little one-step _hop_ , Hyunjin focused on keeping Felix from falling and eating dirt on the slick pavement. They finally make it though, arm in arm, and if the young, underpaid cashier eyes them a little nasty for coming in at ass o’clock in the morning, the air is warm and there’s the promise of dinner. Dinner, or breakfast, whichever. _Convenience store ramyun is above and beyond the social construct of time, and is acceptable whenever_ , Jisung told him once. Jisung-ah is wise, sometimes, not that Hyunjin will ever tell him.

Hyunjin _does_ end up buying two red cups of Shin ramyun, as well as a couple shiny gold packages of the Binch cookies Felix likes. He gets banana milk too, but he runs out of money at the register and the cashier huffs as he gets up to put one of them away. _Too broke to get a milk, huh_ , he mutters under his breath, and Hyunjin considers the social and moral repercussions of slapping a child. He hopes Felix doesn’t mind sharing.

As he comes back to the table he tucked Felix away in, he thinks convenience stores are dreamy places, after dark, fluorescent and fuzzy in a way that fades into the night. Convenience stores at night make you honest, in a way that church doesn’t. He thinks that’s kind of stupid, but stupid like true things are. Felix is dozing where he sits, eyes lidded and nose buried into his scarves, multiple, but he wakes up to the hot steam of noodles in front of him, good and greasy and most definitely not allowed. It’s really too late to give a fuck, though.

“Felix, I don’t know what’s going through your head, but you can’t keep _doing this_ to yourself.”

Felix looks up, mouth crammed full of noodles, doesn’t really respond, just mumbles “ _Ffufuhash fwah_ ,” wiggles his eyebrows in a way that asks him to elaborate.

Hyunjin passive-aggressively opens a Binch cookie and slides it across the table, “ _Whatever it is_ , stop.

Felix swallows, picks up the shortbread and cradles it in his palms, eyes him wary, “With Minho-hyung gone, I don’t know, it makes everything real. I knew we weren’t all going to make it, but I didn’t feel it until he left,” He takes a tiny bite of the cookie, swallows it dry. “I _need_ this, Hyunjin-ah. More than _anything_. There’s really not a lot left for me, across the water.” He crumbles what’s left of the cookie in his hand, accidentally, and Hyunjin slides him another one, “If they want flawless dancing, I’ll give it to them. If they want thin legs, a tiny waist, hollowed collarbones, _I’ll give it to them_.” Felix meets his eye, for the first time since they’ve arrived at this bright little wasteland in the city. His gaze is bottomless deep, like honey over steel, and Hyunjin imagines there’s really nothing this boy won’t do.

It's almost frightening, almost enviable.

“I don’t have a _choice_. I _can’t_ fail, not at this,” Felix twists the package of the cookie in his hands and Hyunjin wonders if any of them will survive to be eaten. Felix’s voice is going rapid, shoulders slumping, “I’m not cut out to be a busker, or a stripper, or an accountant, I need this like _breathing_ Jin-ah, you don’t understand--”

He lays one hand over the crumpled remains of the cookie in Felix’s palms, wraps his fingers around chilly hands, squeezes once, squeezes twice, “I _do_ understand, Felix. I understand more than anything in the world.” And he does. He understands fear stronger than sleep and desire stronger than hunger, because if there is one thing Hwang Hyunjin understands, it is how to want.

The veneer is cracking, and finally it breaks. Felix drops the cookie and grasps him back, loops two fingers around his thumb, “I don’t know how to be perfect for them,” he says, and it’s said with such quiet certainty Hyunjin knows it’s a confession scraped from the bottom of him.

Hyunjin remembers the men in polyester suits, thinks of Felix’s swollen knee, his textbooks, his long hours and late nights, the embers in him that keep him going when food doesn’t: they don't deserve this boy and they don't even know it. The company and the managers and the crowd,  _they don't deserve_ this beautiful creature forged in heat and laughter and steel, and Hyunjin wonders how he was ever so stupid to think that _he_ deserved Felix. He feels so suddenly hopeless he wants to drown himself in his cup-ramyun.

“You won’t be perfect for them,” he realizes suddenly, “None of us will ever be.” Felix digs the blunt nails of his fingers into the palm of Hyunjin’s hand, stress painfully apparent, and he continues, “None of us will ever be perfect enough for them, but you’re paying in your blood, sweat, and tears, and that will be enough.  _I promise_.”

Felix sits back, threads their fingers together, his whisper is heavy, almost lost in the aisles of the store, the silence of the night, but Hyunjin catches it, barely, “I don’t know how to be perfect for _you_ , for _Stray Kids_.”

Hyunjin laughs, despite himself, despite everything, thinks perfection is such a strange, ugly, human thing. He fixes his gaze on the boy with the husky voice and easy movement, insatiable in his scorching perseverance and thirst for more, for _everything_. He fixes his gaze on Felix, on Yongbokkie, on Jikseu, on  _who the fuck even knows_ , and says, y _ou already are, you complete and utter dumbass_.

Felix smiles, and it’s hard to see in the shadows thrown by the fluorescent lighting, but Hyunjin would like to think it’s something gentle.

Their time here has to end, even though Hyunjin doesn’t want it to, and he sweeps the shortbread crumbs off of the table even though _Felix_ was the one ripping them to shreds, and they thank the cashier as they leave, who respectively scowls at them like he wishes they were dead.

They take turns drinking their one banana milk, on the walk back, fingers brushing, and Hyunjin learns that Felix doesn’t mind sharing.

Hyunjin sneaks a glance at him on their walk back, bundled up tight and complaining about _the fucking weather in Seoul, Jesus Christ are you people snowmen?_ And he thinks he looks nice, against the backdrop of slushy winter, bright and glowing in stark relief. There are much greater depths than just _nice_ , but Hyunjin thinks that's his safest bet. They get to the dorm and Felix grabs his arm before he can turn away, “Thank you for the meal, Jin-ah,” he says, looking up from under his lashes, and Hyunjin catches his breath, dizzily feels like he’s being thanked for more than that, but by the time he’s opened his mouth, Felix has hobbled off.

Hyunjin tucks his hands in his pockets, looking for his keys, and he’s surprised to suddenly feel a the crinkling wrapper of a Binch cookie. _Felix, you sneak._

He shouts, across the lobby where Felix has shuffled to the elevators, _far_ too loud for this early in the morning, but he’s riding high on greasy noodles and clever fingers sneaking into his pockets, and _he doesn’t care anymore_ , in the best way, in the punch-drunk, teenage-heart beating out of your chest way, “It’s not a gift if you give me back the food I paid for!” He gets only a bubbling laugh in response, a flash of white teeth, before the elevators have closed and Hyunjin is alone.

He desperately hopes they both will be here, for the next snow of the season, and maybe the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fyi binch cookies are these delicious little shortbread bitches covered in chocolate my friend bought back for me from korea, and my life has never been the same
> 
> fyi part dos, I refuse to believe that felix's favorite flavor of gatorade isn't the blue kind, just seems like him, fight me if you disagree
> 
> fyi part tres, I lifted the stripper conversation almost _word for word_ from a convo I heard in intro to lit, and it haunts me to. this. day.
> 
> thank you for reading lovely people!


	6. Isn't It Lovely, All Alone?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyunjin has a choice to make, but in the end, it might not matter.
> 
> Felix is a summer storm, a whip-crack loud one that feels deeply and drenches him.
> 
> Maybe they'll make it. 
> 
> Maybe.

The story starts like this: The nine of them have become eight, but there is a show to stage yet. There will be an exhibition of eight idol songbirds draped in silver and oil-slick leather amidst the raging club-town of Sinchon-dong. The lark that does not sing sweetly enough will cut, and there will be seven. This is something Hyunjin knows.

Starts like this: They have left Lee Minho behind, but parts of him remain. There is the second verse to the second rap, two lines hissed with a crack and a sizzle and no one to spit them. This is also something Hyunjin knows.

Starts like this: Felix walked into the practice room on the first day with blood simmering and much to prove, and the story will end with him too. This is not something Hyunjin knows.

* * *

Chan is waiting for him back at the dorm, but it’s not a surprise, not really. Chan-hyung seems untouchable, at first impression--unreadable, pitch eyes and a head stuck in the stars--but if you chip away the surface of chilly disinterest, there’s no hint of iciness, only awkward earnestness and depth of feeling.

Hyunjin’s grown used to his quiet form of nurturing, his twitchy way of hovering, and Chan’s been circling him around doorways and recording equipment all day, mother hen and vulture at equal turns.

Hyunjin has slogged through three hours of recording and four of choreography, and Chan is the last barrier between himself and the congealed mulnaengmyeon leftover in the fridge. He’d have a little less patience and a little more bite at the end of any other long day, but Hyunjin's not exactly _eager_ to inhale three-day-desecrated noodles, so he resigns himself to waiting for Chan to fidget himself into saying what he needs to say. He turns to the figure leaning deceptively relaxed against the entry to the kitchen and raises a single eyebrow.

Chan clears his throat, makes a face that Hyunjin thinks is meant to be reassuring but that mostly just makes his cheeks dimple unevenly. It’s unfortunately charming, “Hyunjin-ah, can’t _believe_ I ran into you here,” Chan looks up to the heavens beyond their low ceiling as if gathering strength, “You got time to talk?”

Hyunjin presses two fingers to his temple, tries to remember that Chan-hyung is their leader, and that the morally-respectable value leadership and healthy communication over greasy takeout. It’s a losing battle, “You can’t believe that you ran into me, in the dorm. The dorm I come back to at the same time every Tuesday. The dorm we both live in,” he says. “ _Truly_ , I cannot believe this day has come. When I pass out from the shock, I beg that you use some goddamn Nivea on your dry-ass lips before you give mouth-to-mouth to revive me.”

Chan rolls his eyes at the ribbing, shifts restless, but his death grip on the door frame slackens, “Don’t talk shit then expect resuscitation, asshole.” He reaches one finger up to skim across his own mouth, “They’re not _that_ dry.¨

Hyunjin gives a whisper of a laugh as he brushes past Chan into the kitchen, “Whatever you say, you sorry excuse of a lizard. What did you want to talk to me about, Hyung?”

Chan quirks an eyebrow, looks ridiculous with the artful slash through the left one, like he’s lifting two miniature eyebrows at once, seagull wings flapping, “That’s _lizard-hyungnim_ to you,” and Hyunjin snorts a laugh so ugly he almost impales a chopstick into his hand, instead of the coagulated cake of tupperware noodles he’d been aiming for. There's less left than he remembers, and if he finds out Jisung has been stealing his food again-- the police will never find his body, Hyunjin will ensure it.

But Chan’s face shutters, he steps into the kitchen and shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie, “I lied, I came here looking for you. We need to talk about the Sinchon stage performance, the reorganization of _Hellevator_.”

Hyunjin carefully picks through to find the least shriveled noodles, glances back at Chan, “What about it? Practice has been going well, we could perform that song in our sleep,” with this delirious breakneck pace of debut, Hyunjin thinks they might have to.

Chan fixes him with his gaze, for once steady, “Someone needs to take Minho’s part. The second verse of the second rap. J. Y. Park-sunbaenim says he feels the dance line slacking, and you know as well as anyone he doesn’t abide slack,” The phrase _deadweight_ hangs sticky in the air, silent but ready to hit him with the force of an anchor, to take Hyunjin through the floor. Chan continues undeterred, “He says he wants it to go to either you or Felix.”

_They are not slack, they have beaten the slack out of themselves sunup to sundown, chain links drawn tight through the belly. Hyunjin is their princeling dove forged in alloy and Felix is their hurricane in a bottle, because everyone says it’s so. If Park-sunbaenim can’t see it then he’s a bitch, a deaf bitch in an ugly turtleneck._

Hyunjin gives a vicious stab to a stray chunk of noodles, “You’re the one who professes to be our leader, Chan-hyung. Shouldn’t you be the one doing the choosing.” It’s at once a question and accusation, and Chan is unimpressed.

Chan chastises him with one indecipherable look--gin-sharp--biting but cut with syrup, “I’m trying to _help_ , you whiny string bean,” and that’s where Chan’s endearment lies. He will always help, even when he can’t. Hyunjin thinks it must be awfully heavy, being the Atlas to bear their burden.

Chan pauses, “It’s a hard verse,” he says. Because for all of his lyrical turns of phrase in music, Chan-hyung is sincere, and speaks the same. Hyunjin appreciates simple truths, even though he often doesn’t get them.

Hyunjin pops the mangled leftovers into the microwave, punches in a random assortment of minutes, prays he won’t set the dorm on fire _again_ or else Changbin won’t ever let him live it down, “It’s pretty tricky,” Hyunjin says, and it’s the understatement of the _fucking year_. Before that verse was Minho’s, it belonged to Hyunjin, and the spit-fire quickness that Hyunjin couldn’t deliver almost got him eliminated. He lightly toys with the idea that the verse is cursed, but he can't say if that makes it better or worse.

“Perfecting a new verse along with the reorganization of the choreo will be hellish, I didn’t want to force it on either of you,” Chan says, “Whoever takes it will be at massive disadvantage.” It finally sinks into him, the sacrifice Chan is laying out onto the kitchen counter. One of them will take the verse, and one of them will toe the line of elimination, beckon it a little closer.

_“And that’s the Tragedy of the Commons,” his sophomore econ teacher says, sighing with a velvet heaviness Hyunjin at fifteen is beginning to echo, “Humans are such selfish, silly creatures, aren’t they?”_

Hyunjin tucks the memory into the grit of his teeth, lets his nails print half-moon stamps into the meat of his hand, “What did Felix say?”

Chan raises his eyebrows, makes the left one the stylist-noona carved out flap like a bird in the wind, and Hyunjin feels a laugh bubble hysterical in his throat, speculates that Chan is not nearly as slick as he thinks he is, “You’re pitiful soft for that boy, hyung, and you eat lunch with him daily,” Hyunjin says. “You would have asked him first. What did he say?”

Something sparks in Chan’s dark eyes, and Hyunjin hopes he hasn’t given too much of himself away, wills the desperation back into the cage of his chest. “Felix says it’s all up to you, Jinnie. He’ll take it for you if you want him to, but he said you’ve performed it before, and you would know if you’d be able to pull it off.” He hesitates, and Hyunjin is struck by how much Chan cares for them, all of them, from skin to bone.

_It won’t matter in the end, though. That kinda love is stunning in it’s truth, but not enough to turn the tide._

“Felix will take this for you, and I can tell you he would do it gladly,” Chan says. “But remember that you’re not the only one who struggles with pronunciation, with getting the words out right, and your decision could send someone home.”

 _Of course he would take it, that silly, silly boy_. _Doesn’t he know what’s good for him?_

Chan is staring like he sees through him, to the heart of him, “You have by tomorrow to make your choice, make sure it’s the right one.”

Chan turns to leave the kitchen but stops, turns around, grins paper-thin wry “And Jinnie--your noodles are on fire.”

Hyunjin whips around only to find that smoke has blacked out the window of the microwave, “ _Fuck!_ ” And Chan is laughing as he’s leaving.

 _Bang Chan is an over-caffeinated, under-exfoliated disaster,_ Hyunjin thinks, _a frenetic mess that reeks of doe-eyed earnest talent_ , as he frantically tries to air out the burnt smoke and scrape the charcoal into the sink, _and I wouldn’t give him up for the world._

Hyunjin has a choice to make. He hopes it will be the right one. But Hyunjin is only human, and humans are such selfish, silly creatures, aren’t they?

* * *

Hyunjin is languishing under a veritable mountain of blankets when Felix comes to him.

Sometimes, the evenings will slow, after a long day’s work, and those lazy, sinking evenings are good for unwinding, but better for misery. Jeongin is laying in bed on the other side of the room, pre-calculus problem sets crumpled and forgotten next to him. He’s watching one of his historical dramas, the ones pondering power and intrigue and the snake-eyed beauties of the emperor’s court, the ones he swears up and down to detest when teased. He looks apathetic to Hyunjin’s plight, as well as general existence, and Hyunjin wonders where the next generation has gone wrong.

 _After all I’ve done for him_ , Hyunjin narrows his eyes peering over the blankets, but the effect is lost on Jeongin, who still doesn’t care, _the disrespect is astounding._

Just as he’s about to open his mouth to nag Jeongin into comforting him, the door slips open and Felix slinks inside silently. Only  _then_ does Jeongin-ie look up. He smiles in greeting, the murder of the empress glinting off the silver of his braces. Hyunjin is still to be ignored, apparently.

_What a little two-bit traitor._

Felix smiles back, murmurs something low and soft, but then turns to Hyunjin, makes his way across the room to sit on his bed. He’s dizzying this close, a summer storm trapped in a boy, and Hyunjin considers pulling the covers over his head, like a child frightened of the thunder. Felix opens his mouth and Hyunjin has no idea what to expect, could be anything from a meme he needs translated ( _Jin-ah! I found this on Twitter, but..._ ) to a story he wants to share ( _Jin-ah! So I was talking to the meat-skewer la_ _dy on Hyehwa-ro and she said..._ ). Hyunjin can predict him no more than he can the weather, and it’s unbearably enthralling.

What comes out is still a surprise, even so, “Jin-ah, I heard you had it rough today--wanted to see you,” He looks like a dream in the dim light of the room, all sharp contours, blurred edges and shimmering eyes. Hyunjin shivers under six blankets and thinks this is all so _unfair_. Felix leans in close, whispers over the shell of his ear like he’s telling a secret and Hyunjin forgets how to _breathe_ , “Heard from Changbin-hyung you set the kitchen on fire again.”

Hyunjin makes an undignified sound, a muffled wail into the pillow. He tries to kick Felix off the bed but gets caught in the blankets, ends up flinging his phone halfway across the room to clatter against a _Big Bang_ poster on the wall, _rest easy Taeyong-sunbaenim_. Jeongin is howling at them to be quiet, _Shut up, shut up the both of you, Her Royal Highness Jang-mama is having an affair and I can’t hear--_ and Felix is laughing so hard the sound almost _fizzes_ , like cherry coke and bubblegum pop rocks. Hyunjin wants the feeling of it against his teeth.

Felix leans back, after he’s laughed himself quiet, settles himself in the lump of the comforter propped up by Hyunjin’s knees. He looks even smaller like this, swathed in sweats too big and between Hyunjin’s legs. Felix looks at him, sloe-eyed and heavy, “I know that Chan-hyung talked to you today, about the performance. I just wanted to tell you that I’ll do it, if you need me to.” Felix finally exhales, mindlessly circles a thumb over the blanket where Hyunjin’s ribs would be, “I know the verse was brutal the last time you held it, but I didn’t tell Chan-hyung to give it to me because I think you can do it, do it far better than I could.” It’s half candid praise and half calculated risk, and Hyunjin thinks he shouldn’t expect anything less.

“I don’t know if I can execute it, to the finish, not with so little time,” he says, and it’s a naked truth that rests weary between them.

Felix gives half a wane smile, eyes unreckonable under sooty lashes, “None of us do,” and he tells it like a joke. “None of us know what the hell we’re doing, and if it’s too much, then I’ll take it from you. I’ll do the verse. I’ve got your back, Jin-ah.”

 _I don’t know what I would do without you here_ , he almost says; changes his mind at the last second. “Thank you,” he says instead.

Hyunjin has made his choice.

* * *

 It's two am, the day before the showcase, and Hyunjin has huddled into one of the private vocal rooms, pen between his teeth and Minho’s lines in front of him. He hopes he’s done right by them, the eight of them left. He hopes and he prays but more than anything, he practices.

In the end, it won’t matter.

* * *

 If Sinchon-dong is sullen and gray in the daylight, it seems to grow fangs in the evening. Music pulses out of clubs and bars into the greasy smoke of the street. Pretty girls in tight skirts and painted lips peer curiously at them from over their phones, boys with shaved heads and starless eyes stare unabashedly. The air is heavy with cheap Chinese food and lilac perfume and clove cigarettes, it bleeds from the pores of the concrete and makes his head hurt. The crowd that flocks around their stage is achingly young, his age,  _les enfants terribles_  with too much money to spend and too little love to give, and the only thing separating them will be five meters and a red rope.

Hyunjin fiddles with the rings on his fingers in their makeshift backstage, catches Felix’s eye as he’s biting his lip, curving his mouth silent around his verses, heedless of the makeup that smears his mouth cherry and coats every freckle. Like this he's beautiful, but blank. A tabula rasa, ready to burn down and rebuild any way they want him to. It makes his heart hurt, and he doesn't know why.

 _We’ll make it_ , Hyunjin thinks, as they step out in front of the crowd, a murmuration of sweet young starlings with swift beating hearts.

For the first time in long while, Hyunjin is unsure.

* * *

 The stage performance is a trainwreck in slow motion, something tragic and beautiful and fucked up that you can’t look away from. Hyunjin doesn’t see every mistake so much as he feels them run through him with a spear. The feeling is multiplied by the cutting grin of every pretty young thing standing vicious in the crowd. Chan’s vocals wobble unsteadily in the chorus, Woojin’s voice shrinks into the crowd, folds into itself and disappears, Hyunjin’s pronunciation runs slurry and thick, he trips and falls over the cursed second verse of the second rap. Felix stumbles for _real_ , over a move in the choreo he’d nailed in practice hundreds of times over, and his words stammer one over the other like falling dominoes. It’s a crash and a burn but the audience _stays_ , stays gasping and whooping through it all, and it’s a small miracle settling in his chest.

They beam floodlight smiles through every mistake, bow deep and low when they finish--makes the jewelry around their necks _clink_ \--but they get back into the van and no one says a word. Hyunjin leans his head against Jeongin’s shoulder and hopes for another small miracle.

He doesn’t get one. It seems as though Hyunjin spent the last of his miracles in the glimmering streets of Sinchon-dong.

The diatribe that spills out of J. Y. Park when they all meet once again later that evening is built from the kind of honesty meant to tear you to pieces, Hyunjin thinks. He lays out every flaw in blinding, high definition, and Hyunjin is praying, praying for another chance, for this stop, for this _all_ to stop.

_Please don’t be me, please don’t send me home, I’ll be better, I need this, need them, please, please, please--_

It’s not him.

J. Y. Park thanks Felix for his time, slowly gets up from his chair, and leaves the room. He doesn’t look back. He doesn't need to.

Hyunjin feels breathless, like someone’s reached inside him and scooped out all of the important parts, left just the husk and the armor of him. Felix crumples, like J. Y. Park took the last piece of him when he left, and it’s so deeply _private_ , the sounds that come out of him, the crook of his neck as he buries his face in his hands, that Hyunjin turns away. He desperately avoids looking at the cameras creeping closer, blinks blearily and tastes salt on his lips.

But eventually Felix comes to him, like he always does, inevitable as the tides. He can’t help a watery smile when Felix curls into him, apologies rolling off his tongue broken by hiccups, because Felix feels deeply, and loudly, it pours out of him in hot summer-rain tears and in the blushed tips of his ears.

 _It’s not your fault_ , and it isn’t, because Felix worked till the last ounce of him burned away.

Hyunjin tells him this, murmurs it like a psalm into the curve of his ear, but it just makes Felix cry harder, a scorching, stuffy, monsoon into his neck, hiding shiny tears away from the cameras. Hyunjin runs a hand gently down the arch of his spine and wonders if he should feel more than numb.

Hyunjin watches Felix leave with the straight-backed grace of a dancer, his poised steps and flint eyes glimmering wet, and it’s something almost lovely.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song is _Lovely_ by Billie Eilish + Khalid, because the elimination makes me emo :' ( I had to rewatch it like three times for this and I am _not ok_... we really cryin in the club rn.
> 
> I understand this is w a y too long, I just _uhh_ love Chan? And making myself miserable?? 
> 
> Also not ok: the number of times I had to type 'noodles' in this chapter. Do I despise this word now? Absolutely.


	7. Suffer to Be Glad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyunjin is selfish. Selfish and fickle and so, so in love. 
> 
> It's unfair. A lot of things are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspiration taken from RM's _Tokyo_. Sorry for the long wait! Comments are my lifeblood plz leave them friends <3

The slush of old snow is black under the boots of seven boys stumbling through the streets, and under fluorescent lamplight and the scuff of Hyunjin’s heel it looks like soot, like something burned. Like the ashes Felix leaves in his wake.

Hyunjin stops--looks up to the blackened night as if in prayer--palms turned-up to the sky and cheeks numbed with chill, and he doesn’t know why this is happening, Felix danced and sang and smiled for the cameras like he was born to, he did everything just so, just right--

_He sure was beautiful while he lasted, though._

To love a burning thing is to ask for misery, Hyunjin thinks, and he closes his eyes, lets the snowflakes land on his lashes and scorch the stretch of delicate skin they find there.

“Hyunjin!” He blinks and finds Woojin jogging back to him, the others cutting tiny figures in the darkness already blocks away.

He thinks that Woojin wears misery well, better than the rest of them. The cold flushes his cheeks rosy and the wind tussles his hair, making his red-rimmed eyes glimmer in the lamplight. He doesn’t shiver from the cold and he laughs when the producers tell him to and Hyunjin supposes that loving Woojin would be easy, easy because Woojin loves gentle, loves honest and soft like an early spring. But he recalls Felix’s gunmetal gaze in the reflection of the practice mirror and the heady sound of his laugh as Hyunjin whispers in his ear, and he thinks to want anyone else would be something close to sacrilege.

Woojin skids to a stop but doesn’t reach for him, just shifts on his feet like settling roots into the ground. “Christ, we’ve been calling for you... did you leave something behind?”

 _Yeah_ , Hyunjin thinks, and he remembers how today he’s learned how Felix looks when he’s lost everything, _I really, really did_.

Woojin doesn’t remark on the tears Hyunjin feels springing hot and frustrated against the winter air, but he feels a hand, warm and steady, on the small of his back when they rejoin the others. He hates himself for it, but he can’t help the way he wishes it was a little bit smaller, a little bit finer-boned with the nails chewed off in half-moons, heavy with the flashy gold watch strapped to a delicate wrist.    

To love a burning thing is to be consumed, and Hyunjin wonders how much of him is left.

* * *

 Hyunjin is dragged back to the dorm, half-staggering, half-slumped over Changbin’s shoulder, weary and stripped bare-bone clean, like someone has scoured the cavity in his chest with baking soda and bleach. Changbin might be warm under his fingertips, but it doesn’t reach him, he doesn’t feel it through the clench of his nails and the bite of December’s teeth. Hyunjin loved December as a child, the way the snow glittered in the air and the great big wink his mom gave as she palmed shiny foil-wrapped chocolates into his pockets before school, the way blushing schoolgirls and stuttering neighbor boys used to shove ribbon-wrapped gifts into his hands. December was _so_ pretty, he remembers, and Hyunjin is unbearably weak to pretty, pretty things.

December at eighteen tastes like disappointment and hunger so deep it aches in him, sounds like missed calls from his mom and none at all from his father. December looks like Felix as he leaves, and Hyunjin wonders if all this is worth it.

 _I’m so tired_ , Hyunjin thinks, _I’m so, so tired of this._

They finally reach the dorm and Hyunjin stumbles through the threshold in a daze. Dazed in the bad way, in the cold way, like someone’s stolen the warmth from his blood and the breath from his lungs. A one two shot of morphine to the neck.

 _That’s what it’s like_ , he thinks as he shakes them all off with a thin smile, _like being drugged. Dizzy and sick and so, so numb--_ like in middle school when he took a dose of cold medicine, then forgot about it and took another, when he called his mom fifteen minutes later to tell her he was dying. It feels like that, a little.

“ _Yah_ , asshole,” the voice behind him is pinched with the tail edge of a slur, and Hyunjin knows before he turns around he’ll see Changbin leaning into the shadow of the doorway. Changbin, pale, small-statured and swaddled in his leather jacket, doesn’t disappoint.

Changbin shoves his hands into his pockets, looks at Hyunjin tenderly in a way he pretends that he isn’t, “He told me not to tell you, but he said he doesn’t know how to go through training again without you.”

Hyunjin has cried himself empty, but he still counts the silver piercings twinkling in Changbin’s ears, an old trick from his mother to temper the swelling of his heart. He recalls the brush of her fingers tucking his hair behind the shell of an ear, _we’re waterfalls by nature, baby, we can’t help it_. “Why would you _tell_ me that, Hyung. Hasn’t today been long enough?”

Changbin steps closer, close enough to wrap a hand around Hyunjin’s trembling wrist, “It’s been a long fucking day, Hyunjin, but imagine how much longer tomorrow would be waking up alone.”

Hyunjin meets his gaze, and he’s struck by the exhaustion sunken around Changbin’s eyes, a fatigue of the devout that he never really bothered to notice, “I love you, I really do, but Hyunjin,” Changbin pauses, like he’s debating how deep to the bone he really means to cut, “I love you, but this isn’t about you.”

The grip on his wrist tightens, not quite yet painful, “Felix is my friend too, he’s my brother and he’s gone and there’s nothing I can fucking do about it.”

Changbin finally lets go, scuffs his heavy black boots like he’s moving to leave, “You have the rest of your life to break yourself up over this, God knows why you always do, but we need you right now. We need you _here_ with us, Felix needs you _there_ , by his side. I love you, Hyunjin, you know I’d do anything for you, but get over yourself.”

Hyunjin shudders a sigh, mutters offhand as he leans in to close the door, “It’s not like I can’t mope and stand pretty at the same time, I know my place.”

Changbin just about rolls his eyes near into the back of his head, but his tone is so serious Hyunjin would think he’d never mean anything more, “We need you, Hyunjin. Not your face, or your smile or your dumb fucking dimples. We need you and all of your goddamn fire.”

Hyunjin is unbearably weak to pretty, pretty things. Things like lace and pearl and the red-wine smiles of divine youth, but he is learning to be strong. Hyunjin is unbearably strong for black-booted starlings who call him family, and for a boy with summer freckled on his cheeks and a voice like a battle-cry.

* * *

 To: _my sunshine uwu_

_hey felix-ah, get some sleep tonight_

_2:03 AM_

_i want you to know_

_2:11 AM_

_i just wanna stay right next to you_

_2:38 AM_

_Read 4:36 AM_

* * *

 Weeks pass as slippery as water through his fingers, and less changes than Hyunjin would have thought, less changes than what he would have wanted. It’s not too much of a surprise though, the way Hyunjin is able to find himself moving forward. He’s good at missing people. He’s had a lot of practice.

Hyunjin feels parallel to a lot of things, a lot of people, close enough to see and close enough to want but never able to connect. Weeks pass and Hyunjin supports them like Changbin needs him to, like they all need him to. He bickers with Jisung, and gently corrects Woojin’s wayward limbs in choreo and pretends he doesn’t hear Chan’s frustrated tears when he goes to get a glass of water from the kitchen in the middle of the night. Hyunjin laughs with Seungmin at viral videos titled things like  _vines that butter my toast_  and eats cheap bibimbap with Jeongin late into the morning and he dances like the world is ending, just like they tell him to. It’s a system, it’s a balancing act, it’s just life, he thinks.

Felix hasn’t texted him back.

This is fine, he thinks. He supposes that people need space, though he can’t begin to understand why, when it’s all he’s ever had.

 _I’m fine_ , he thinks, when he finally lulls himself to sleep with the rise of the sun, ribs protesting at the abuse of the muscle and sinew wrapped around them.

 _I’m fine_ , he says over his shitty wilted salad to six troubled faces across the dinner table each night.

 _I’m fine_ , he tells himself, when he thinks he sees Felix in the convenience store and nearly breaks down in tears on the spot. It was a new trainee. His name is Bryan. Bryan, Hyunjin learns, is fresh from America, and laden with an unfettered smile and three bags of honey butter chips he tells Hyunjin about  _this beautiful Australian dancer, Hyunjin-sunbae, you wouldn't believe, he doesn't laugh all that much but he moves like wind, like his feet won't touch the floor if he wills it so. Do you know him?_

Hyunjin grins back with too many teeth--all plastic and no mirth--and wonders why he's tamping down violent envy for a fifteen-year-old scrap of a scrawny American wunderkind,  _yeah I know him_ _, maybe if you're lucky you'll debut with him, huh, better step it on up Brody._

 _my name is_ _Bryan_ , he says, utterly perplexed, followed with  _ugh I could only dream to stand next to someone like that someday,_ and Hyunjin feels too bad to be this pettywhen he sees so much of who he used to be reflected in this boy's guileless stare. He pays for Bryan's chips with the last 10,000 won in his wallet and ruffles his hair, tries to remember what being in love with a dream felt like.  

He's fine, really.

But there are moments. Moments alone after dark with his heart swallowed down his throat and his skin fitting tight, when it really doesn’t feel _fine._ This is when he misses Felix most. It’s fine though, most days. He’s busy, most days.

But Hyunjin doesn’t lie, at least not to himself, and when he peers into his own bloodshot eyes at three in the morning in the bathroom mirror, he thinks he might have been lying to himself all along.

It doesn’t matter. Felix is gone, and if he was here Hyunjin wouldn’t be allowed to have him. _It doesn’t even matter,_  he tells himself, even though it really, really does.

Hyunjin is good at wanting, and even better at missing, so that’s what he does.

* * *

 It comes out of nowhere, the olive branch.

From: _my sunshine uwu_

_jinne, i’m sorry for not coming to you, i’m so sorry. it was a rough time lol_

_4:13 PM_

_lets meet. hangang park, like we always said we would haha. 3 pm tomorrow_

_4:13 PM_

_there’s something i want to say_

_4:24 PM_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Check out this moodboard if you're so inclined :D
> 
> https://padlet.com/evybdyknwit/g366t0ilwmoz
> 
> (there's a tiny spoiler for the last chapter if you care to find it)
> 
> Thanks again for reading loves


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